What’s cooking between Mulayam and ND Tiwari?

Of late the national president of the Samajwadi Party Mulayam Singh Yadav has been hobnobbing with Congress patriarch Narain Dutt Tiwari, whose immense wisdom and wit have got overshadowed by all the bad things in the recent past.

People talk more about the paternity test than his vision for the development of the country and knowledge of global economy. The time when people in UP were not even looking at their neighbouring states to take lessons in development, Tiwari was talking about China.

The fact is people of Uttar Pradesh and its sibling state Uttarakhand majorly owe the development of their states to him. The last when a chief minister spoke about roads and villages was Tiwari. Thereafter Mandal and Mandir took the centre-stage.

But why has Mulayam found sudden love for Tiwari at the time when he is developing relations with the Congress? I doubt if his overtures to Tiwari would go down well with the Congress high command.

One can understand Mulayam taking help from Tiwari while drawing a blueprint of the state’s industrialisation. His son and chief minister Akhilesh has dreams of developing UP into an industrial and IT hub but certainly lacks the experience Tiwari had.

But can Tiwari at the age of 88 help him politically?

The common presumption driven from their handshake is that Mulayam is trying to woo Brahmins for the 2014 polls. After Janeshwar Mishra’s death the Samajwadi Party has no prominent Brahmin face to project.

This is appalling. Are we puppets? Would Brahmin support the SP because Tiwari says Mulayam should be Prime Minister or because they believe in the leadership of the backward leader and that he can deliver? Are we just vote banks or human beings with some intelligence?

Nonetheless Tiwari has been received warmly in Lucknow with the paternity test failing to cast any shadow. He has been surprising people with his memory though he is obviously not in a very good shape. Let’s see how much their hug would pay political dividends in the elections.

I mentioned about his wit. I will end my blog citing a case involving a senior scribe.

A senior journalist had published the interview of the chief minister Tiwari in his paper. A few days later, when he happened to meet Tiwari with other colleagues, he warmly embraced him and said, ‘What a great interview you published in the paper? It would have been better had you met me before writing it.” Just compare it with the ruckus the politicians would have created today.